Memoirs and Magic: Advocacy Through the Written Word

In this episode of Ohio DD Talks, host Shari Cooper sits down with two fellow authors and disability advocates, Renee Wood and Allison Boot, for a conversation about writing books as a form of advocacy. All three have published their own work, and together they talk about what inspired them to write, what the process actually took, and what they hope readers walk away with. Shari also shares the story behind her own book, I'm Okay With Myself.

Host: Shari Cooper Guests: Renee Wood, Allison Boot

Key Topics

Meet the Authors: Renee Wood, from Toledo, has been involved in advocacy organizations for more than 20 years and has written two books — a compilation of her blogs called No Choice: Services for People with Disabilities, and an autobiography called The First Cut Is the Sweetest. Allison Boot, of Beavercreek, is Ms. Wheelchair Ohio 2023 and has self-published four young adult and children's fantasy books featuring characters with disabilities, including the Tales of Dance series and a children's book about a unicorn who uses a wheelchair.

Why They Write: Allison has been writing since she was about nine, partly because writing lets her express things she can't always say out loud, and partly because she never saw characters like herself in the books she grew up with. Renee spent years being told she should write a book, but waited until she felt her story had enough of an arc. Shari wrote hers because she wanted to show what it took to become okay with herself.

Representation and Living a Full Life: Allison wants readers to know they can live a full life with a disability without being cured or fixed. Renee's message is that you can live a typical life — love, romance, jobs, friends — if you're willing to fight for it. Shari includes what she calls "Shari tips," practical independent living advice drawn from her own experience.

The Hardest Parts: Renee wrote 64 pages between 2018 and 2024, typing three or four words a minute until she found voice dictation software that got her up to twelve or thirteen. She then used AI to catch grammar and spelling errors while insisting it not change her words. Allison's challenge is knowing when a book is finished and it's time to let it go. For Shari, the hardest part was formatting and publishing — margins, pictures, and specifications.

Publishing Platforms: The panel compares Kindle Direct Publishing, IngramSpark, and Draft2Digital, and discusses when it makes sense to hire freelance help for formatting.

Audiobooks vs. Text-to-Speech: Allison explains the difference and shares how authors can split royalties with narrators and producers instead of paying production costs upfront — a route that makes audiobooks more accessible for self-published authors.

Seeing It in Print: Renee ordered 20 copies and opened one immediately to check that there were really words inside. Allison describes the moment as surreal and being proud that something she worked so hard on existed in a form she could share.

Hopes and Dreams: Renee hopes her books reach someone who is struggling. Allison hopes to catch Disney's attention and see a princess or superhero with a disability on screen. Shari hopes Oprah reads her book, and floats Keke Palmer to play her in a movie version.

Advice for Anyone Thinking About Writing: Renee points out that not many people with developmental disabilities write books, and that's exactly why more should. Everyone has a story, and the only way people will know it is if you tell it.

Why It Matters

Books shape how people understand disability, and for a long time those books were written by other people. This episode is three advocates talking honestly about what it takes to tell your own story and get it into the world.

Resources and Links

• Allison M. Boot's books on Amazon
• Renee Wood's books on Amazon
• Shari Cooper's I'm OK With Myself at Barnes & Noble
• Ohio DD Council Website

Transcript

0:01

What's up everyone, it's your girl Shari Cooper back with another episode of Ohio DD Talks, a podcast by the Ohio Developmental Disability Council. There are lots of ways to share your story as a disability advocate. I choose to share mine by writing a book. That's right, I wrote a whole book. It's all about my life and the challenges I have faced and how I have become okay being myself. Two of my friends wrote books too, Renee Wood and Allison Booth, and they are disability advocates just like me. And today, all three of us will talk about our books, what inspires us, what challenges we face, and what we want people to take away from reading our stories. And maybe you have a story to share too. Have you ever wanted to write a book? Do you want to know how books help people understand disability? Then this episode is for you. And with that, let's go, let's go, let's go. Today I'm speaking with the authors of Ohio. I got some of the best authors. I got Renee Wood and Allison Booth. I'll start with Renee. Is there anything you'd like to say to the podcast nation, Renee? Hi, my name is Renee Wood. I'm from Toledo, Ohio. I've been involved with different advocacy organizations for at least 20 years. And I wrote two books. One is an autobiography, and the other one is a compilation of all the blogs I wrote. Thank you, Renee. Allison, you can introduce yourself. Yes, I am Allison M. Boots. I'm from Dayton, but currently live in Beaver Creek, Ohio. I have written and self-published four books. They are young adult and children fantasy books featuring characters with disabilities. They have themes of equity and self-acceptance. And I will say that even though they are written for children and young adults, many adults have also enjoyed them. And Allison, are you the former Ms. Wheelchair Ohio? What year? I was Ms. Wheelchair Ohio 2023, and actually my platform was all about inclusive literature and how it can encourage young people to read. I said that READ was an acronym for Raise Awareness, Embrace Differences, Advocate for Change, Dream Big. Well, that's cool. We are in the sisterhood because I was Ms. Wheelchair 2008. What made you want to write a book? I have been writing probably since I was about nine years old. It's just a way for me to get feelings out that I can't always easily express verbally. And also I will say that growing up, I didn't see a lot of characters that looked like me in books or characters going through things that I went through as a person with a disability. So that's why when I became older and learned about publishing and self-publishing, that's why I chose to do so. Because I wanted young readers to have representation in books that I did not. Before I forget, can you tell the audience, what is the name of your books? The first one is called Just the Way You Are. The sequel to that one, which is actually the third book that I published is called Love the Way You Dance. So there in my Tales of Dance series, it features princesses with disabilities who love dance. And then I've also written two standalone books, one that is called The Magic Within and the other which is my children's book called Cherish, A New Kind of Unicorn featuring a unicorn who is in a wheelchair. Oh good. Okay, thank you. We wanted to make sure the audience knows that they can pick up your books. Now Renee, I'll come back to you. What made you want to write a book? Ever since I was young, people have always told me I need to write a book about my life. But my life was so different than other people with disabilities. I am 67 years old, and in the 1970s I was doing things that people with disabilities didn't do. But when I was younger I couldn't write a book. I felt like I still was doing a lot of things in my life. I didn't have an ending to it yet because I still wanted to do other things. But I've written two books. My first book is a compilation of all my blogs and it's called No Choice, Services for People with Disabilities. And all my blogs point out the good, bad and the ugly about the disability system and what we've got to go through to get services and to get what we need. My second book is called The First Cut is the sweetest and it's all about my whole life. And in that book I was very open and honest about everything in my life because I wanted people to know that I lived a typical life with my disability. Have you always been the writer, Renee? Oh yeah, I started writing when I was really young. I remember in fifth grade we had to write a pen pal and I looked at my teacher and I said, I don't know what to write. And she said, write what you see, what you feel and what you hear. And that kind of opened my eyes to writing. And when I wrote that, she told me I had a gift for writing. And all my classes that had to do with writing, I always got an A in them because I just had a gift. That's cool. Shari, I know you wrote a book. We've been friends forever. What made you write your book? Yes Renee, we had been friends forever. Oh by the way, you're in my book. I'm in your book? Wow! I'm going to buy your book right after this. But just to tell you why I wrote the book, all my life I have been through challenges. I always say in order for me to keep going and be the person that I was, I had to be okay with myself. So my book is called I'm Okay With Myself. So no matter what challenges I came up against, I still found a way to be okay with it. Because if you can't be okay with yourself, it's kind of hard to move to the next step. So my book is about all the challenges from childhood to now, that I had to go through just to be okay with myself. And hopefully one day to write another book. I have always liked writing. Just like you, Renee, when I was in college an English professor told me I had a good way of expressing myself by writing. He said I should nurture that. I guess I nurtured it in the best way that I could by writing a book. And I'll go to you Allison. What is the main thing or lesson you want people to take away from reading your book? Well, I already touched on this just a little bit that my books have themes of equity and acceptance. Mainly what I want readers to take away from reading my books is that they can live a full life with a disability. And that they don't have to be cured or their disability doesn't have to be fixed. They can be a person with a disability and accept it and live life to the fullest while having a disability. I love that. Renee, what about you? What's your main thing? I touched on that some too. My first book is mostly about the system of disability and how you really don't get much of a choice. They say you get a choice, but you really don't get a choice. It's about advocacy. But my second book is about my life and what I want people to take away from my autobiography is that you can live a typical life if you fight for it. Unfortunately, you've got to fight for it. But if you fight for it, you can live a typical life. You can have love. You can have romance. You can have farts. You can have jobs. You can have friends. You can go out. I'm very honest in my book about all that. What about you, Shari? I think we all have touched on the thing. Mine is being okay with itself. And not only that, I share a few independent living tips. Like back in high school, it was hard for me to learn how to smile. So I share a tip to teach people what I call the very first how to smile. Or I share a tip on how not to drool. Because I used to drool real bad. But thanks to the little tips, I don't drool no more. So if you're looking for independent living tips, I threw a few of what I call Shari tips in there. Shari, I want to ask you a personal question. When you're typing a book, do you get so into it that you drool because you forget not to drool? No. When I'm typing a book, I don't drool. I haven't drooled in, I think, I want to say maybe 20 years. Because I've got a handle on it. It's all because of the tip that's in the book. So I know it don't work for everybody, but I'm hoping some of the tips that I threw out has helped somebody. Because it's always going to be a little Shari sitting somewhere thinking, well what am I going to be like, am I going to drool forever? So maybe you're not going to drool forever. So hopefully that helped. What was the hardest part of the book process for you? The time it took to write it because from 2018 to 2024 I wrote 64 pages because it took me like, I could only type about three or four words a minute. And then I found this technology called voice chat. It could understand my speech so I could dictate my words into voice chat and it would type it for me. So I went up to about 12 or 13 words a minute. That was a lot easier than typing itself. And then I had to edit it. And it took me from April to June to edit it. And I used AI to edit it, but I told AI, don't change any of my words. Just change, let me know. Without any grammar errors or any spelling errors or anything that doesn't make sense. So I went over each word one by one and I changed them if I needed to or I left them the same if I wanted to. So it was a big undertaking. Okay, we're back to you, Allison. What was the hardest part of the book process for you? I think for me the hardest part of the book writing process is knowing when it's okay to let go of the book. Because as Renee just described, it takes a lot of time and a lot of investment when you're writing a book. And as writers, we invest a lot of time in our books. I know for me personally, I've become very attached to the story and the characters. I'm also a bit of a perfectionist. I put a lot of drafts. I edit them myself. I have friends edit. I also pay for some editors. So they all go through a lot of changes. I guess you could say it's just sometimes hard for me to know like, okay, this one's finished. It's as good as it's going to get. It's okay to share it with the world now. Yeah, I understand that because by reading your book, that's your baby. So you want to make sure you get the best version. You're always saying, did I do enough? Did I say enough? Is it enough? So after a while, you have to let it go. I'm speaking for myself as well. You have to let it go. The hardest part for me was actually putting it in the publication with the margins. The margins got to be right. The picture got to be right. The whole publishing, putting it into the process, that was a process for me. It took a while. What platform did everybody use? I use a couple of different platforms. Kindle Direct Publishing through Amazon, and then also a platform called IngramSpark, which allows for more global distribution. But I will say that you're right about the margins and making sure that everything is set properly into the book. That can be very complicated, especially because Kindle Direct Publishing and IngramSpark, they have separate requirements and specifications, as I'm sure most of the platforms do. So I actually tend to get help with that aspect of it from freelance providers. Renee, what platform you use? I also did Kindle Direct Publishing, and I did that by myself. It took me a while to figure it out on my first book. But once I did my first book, I knew how to do it, so my second book was a little bit easier to set up. Kindle Direct, and I like Kindle Direct. It's self-publishing, but you can put it out there on Amazon. Anybody can see it. And I use Draft2Digital, which was a little bit easier for me to figure out the margin and everything. I just wanted to throw that out there for anybody looking to publish a book, you've got several different avenues to tap. How did you feel seeing your book in print for the first time? You know, that's a weird feeling. (Renee chuckles) Don't laugh at me, but I ordered 20 books, and when I got them, the first thing I did was open it up to see if there was actually words in the book (laughter continues). And I could not believe I wrote all that. I was like, oh my god, I wrote this. So needless to say, you were excited. Yeah, and it was really good to see that after all the time, and then you actually see it, and you can't believe you did that. Allison, how did you feel seeing your book in print for the first time? I agree that it's a very surreal moment when you finally see an actual book that you can touch and feel. I just remember being so proud of myself that something that I've worked on so hard or something had come to fruition in a tangible way that could be shared with others. I don't know if the two of you have dabbled into audiobooks yet, but that's something that I do after I put my books out on Amazon and other platforms. Because it's very important to me that people with all types of disabilities come forward, and they're also really important in getting to pick a narrator and talk to them about how I want different characters to sound. Just having my stories come to life in that way is also very exciting. Doesn't that cost a lot of money? It costs, but oftentimes you can also make deals with the narrators and producers to split royalties with them, which is what I do. So there's not a cost for the production, they just share parts of the profits with them. That is great info, because I need to know about that too, because you are right. In order to reach everybody, you want it on different platforms, and the audiobook has to be one of the platforms. So thanks for sharing that, Allison. I'll be reaching out to you to see if you can help me get my book on the audiobook, because that's been a real issue of mine. That sounds good. Allison, can you tell us a little bit about what the difference is between text to speech and audio? Okay, I did text to speech so everybody could read it. Can you tell us what the difference is? So the difference between audiobooks and text to speech is that audiobooks, the narrators will make their voice sound different for each character. Or, I guess, probably in your cases with an autobiography type book, if there was a certain emotion that you wanted expressed at a certain time in the book, you might be able to work with the narrator on how to express that, whereas text to speech is just them straight reading the book. Does that make sense? Yeah, that is really helpful. That is really helpful, really. What are your hopes and dreams for the books you have written? Do you have any major hopes, any major dreams? I just hope that it makes people think, and maybe it will change someone's life who has a disability, who is struggling with what they want to do in life, and frustrated that their dreams are not being fulfilled. I hope they get included, but I also hope they laugh, too. I don't know if I can say this out loud, but one of my girlfriends, she actually read the whole book, and she said, I didn't realize there was going to be so much sex in that book. I was being honest about my life, but people don't know that part of disability, so I was being honestly open, but it was so funny the way she said, I didn't know there was going to be so much sex in that book. Allison, what about you? What are your hopes and dreams for your book? My dream that I've been trying to work on through my writing for young adults and children is to get the attention of Disney, because I think having a princess or superhero with a disability would be the representation for boys and girls with disabilities. But even if that doesn't happen someday, I'll just be happy if young readers are inspired by my books to be more inclusive and know that they can, or that people with disabilities can live life to the fullest while having disabilities. And that we can do everything anybody else can do, we just have to do it a little different. I love it. My hopes are, like I said, if there's a little Shiri out there wondering what her life's going to be, I hope to be a guy that she knows that everything's going to be okay. Just keep living and it's going to be okay. And I hope to maybe a parent, a parent after they have gotten diagnosed that their child has a disability and they don't know what their child may become, I hope I can be a guy to a parent to let them know, to let them live like everybody else and everything will take course. And maybe, maybe my hopes is to be an Oprah Booker one day, who reads a lot of books, so why not mine? I love that too, and I hope Oprah reads my book one day. She reads everybody else's books, so why not ours? I hope one day you caught on the TV and I'm sitting there with Oprah. Do you plan on writing other books in the future? I already wrote two books and they were a headache. I ain't writing no more. I'll write my book. But they never say never. That was a lot of work. But then while I'm on that topic, what was the most powerful feedback you heard from someone who read your book? That they could not believe how much I've done in my life. I mean, I've done more than typical people have done. I just didn't realize how much I've accomplished. I do plan to write more books in the future. I'm working on a couple different stories right now. I have a journal with several more ideas. I don't know how many of them will come to fruition because I also do many other things in terms of advocacy and community involvement. But I hope to at least publish a few more in my lifetime. As far as the most powerful feedback I've gotten, I would say when I go out to... I'll go out to over the holidays and breaks from my vocational commitments. I go out to craft shows and book sales and have a table to sell my books. And when I see little girls with disabilities look at the covers of my books and see characters that look like them, and become so excited that their eyes light up and they say, "oh, she looks like me!" When I see a little girl with a disability that looks like her and know that she wants to read that book, that's why I keep writing. I can tell that it makes you very emotional. Yes, it does make me emotional, but in a good way. It makes my heart very happy. That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that. As far as me, I do not plan on writing any more books in the future, but my feedback has gone so well. Never say never! (everyone laughs) But I really don't plan on writing any more books, but maybe they can turn my book into a movie, that would be so cool! I even know who I would want to play me. It would be Keke Palmer, so I threw it out in the air because sometimes you just gotta let it manifest in you. Threw it out in the air, so I threw it out in the air. You wouldn't play yourself? No, I wouldn't play myself because I'm not an actor, (everyone chuckles) so I would want somebody to play me. I would really want a person with a disability to play me, but there we go again. There's not a lot of actors with disabilities, so that's another issue, but we'll tackle that one on the next episode. So before I go, is there anything else you'd like to add, Allison? Anything else you'd like to add? Just that I hope people get a lot out of this episode and look up our books and enjoy them. Yeah, thank you Allison. What about you Renee, is there anything else you want to add? Not too many people with developmental disabilities actually write books, so I hope that we encourage you to think about writing books because people need to know about our lives and about what we go through and how we overcome it and how we deal with life, and so I hope this encourages people to write their story down. That's good because everyone has a story and no story is the same, so that's good advice Renee.

So everybody listen: 38:37

you have a story in you and the only way people are going to know it is if you tell it, so good advice. So with that, I'm going to say thank you to Allison and Renee for a very great conversation with the authors of Ohio. I would like to invite you to pick up our books wherever they are sold and we thank you for joining us. What an awesome conversation we had today with authors and disability advocates Renee Wood and Allison Bush. If you want to buy our books, the links are in the description of this episode. For more information on the Ohio Developmental Disability Council, visit our website at ddc.ohio.gov. Thank you for joining us and we will catch you next time on Ohio DD Talks. Peace out.